Import XML from Author-it to RoboHelp

[Luyao5C59]

I am importing a book from Author-it to the RoboHelp. The book is saved in the XML format.

I tried to import this XML file to RoboHelp using the importing tool in RoboHelp, but it failed. Below you can find the dialog box that shows the failure.

It seems that RoboHelp cannot recognize the elements in this XML file. My knowledge on XML is quite limited. So should I first map the elements in the XML file to some elements that RoboHelp can recognize in order to import the XML file?

Any input would be appreciated. 

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Is this a "one-off" or are you planning to do it over & over again? Are you planning to author in a structured fashion in RH? If this is just a one-time thing, you might find it easier to import HTML into RH...

[Luyao5C59]

Thank you for your input, Jeff!

It is not a "one-off" task. In fact, we have quite some books that need to be imported to RH. In that case, should I first map all the elements from the XML file to some elements that RH recognizes? I hope that once the mapping is set up, the import would become easier for the other books.

[Stefan Gentz]

Yes, bascially, the process would be to run the XML coming from AuthorIT against an XSLT to transform it into XHTML 1.0. However, as you seeem to use RoboHelp 2017, I suggest looking into upgrading to RoboHelp 2020. RoboHelp 2020 is using XHTML5 which is semantically much richer than XHMTL 1.0 and has elements like article, section, etc. that make it more compatible with architectural more complex XML.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Ok, then you're entering an area of structured authoring in RH that I have no idea how to accomplish. Is the Author-IT content organized using DITA or some other structured schema?

[Stefan Gentz]

Can you open the Author-it.xml file in Notepad++ or some similar text editor and copy / paste the first 10, 20 lines here?

The error messge says, that RoboHelp is firing up the Docbook import filter, but without looking into the code of the file you are trying to import it's difficult to tell more.

[Luyao5C59]

Thank you for the help, Stefan. I attach the file to this post. Could you tell more from it?

[Stefan Gentz]

Thanks. This is proprietary AuthorIT XML. It does not contain the actual content of the manual. You can think of it as some sort of "project file" that lists which files are part of the book, folders, available projects statusses, variables, etc.

This file would be something you could transform with XSLT into the corresponding files of a RoboHelp-Project. Do you also have the actualy content? This is primarily what you will want to transform.